Obama Selling Meetings with Himself for Campaign Donations

An email campaign is underway by the Obama campaign which is engaging in selling lottery tickets for a chance to win a meeting with the POTUS. The emails all pretty much say the same thing - donate three dollars or more to the campaign and you'll be eligible for a chance to meet the President and his wife.

Donate $3 or whatever you can today to be automatically entered to win dinner with Barack and Michelle.

This smells an awful lot like Illinois politics does it not? Didn't the Governor of Illinois get in some hot water recently for attempting to sell Obama's Senate seat after he won in 2008? Yes, I think he did. And now we see through an email campaign the attempt to sell and profit from the sale of lottery tickets which will get the winner a meeting with the President of the United States. Sounds pretty similar to us! We should mention that there is a disclaimer in the fine print at the bottom of these email which reads in part -

No purchase, payment, or contribution necessary to enter or win. Contributing will not improve chances of winning.

Yet the email body text says a minimum of $3 is required to enter. Is this legal? - to pimp out the office of President like this? If the Governor of Illinois didn't get away with it then why should the President? At the very least this is degrading to the office of President is it not? Indeed it is.